


The Drawer

by KatieComma



Series: After the Ghost [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15155615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/pseuds/KatieComma
Summary: Mac tries to cope after Jack is killed by The Ghost in New York in episode 106.





	The Drawer

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Different Tune](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025463) by [katikat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikat/pseuds/katikat). 



It’s Mac’s dirty little secret. Of all the things he’d smuggled out of Jack’s apartment after he died, the t-shirts are the one thing nobody else knows about.

They have their own drawer in his bedroom. Small folded piles of memory gently stacked one on top of the other.

The drawer smells like Jack. Not aftershave, or cologne, or deodorant. Just Jack.

During that first week, when Mac can’t believe he’s really gone, he sometimes opens the drawer just enough to catch the scent before he quickly slides it closed again.

He knows the history of most of them, and the numerical rating of each of the Metallica ones. Jack drones on and on in Mac’s imagination, telling him the stories of every shirt over and over again.

Each night when Mac gets home, he opens the drawer wide and carefully selects one of the shirts, with the help of Jack’s voice in his head: Not that one dude, it’s not an Aerosmith kinda night.

A week after Jack’s death, Mac picks the black Iron Maiden one, and pulls it over his head. He crawls into bed and hugs his arms tight around himself, hugging Jack at the same time. He smells Jack all around him. He’ll never be alone as long as he can smell Jack all around him.

And then he can sleep. Feeling like Jack is holding him close and talking him to sleep like he used to do: Can you believe we jumped right off that tower? Or: You can’t seriously tell me that you’re Han and I’m Chewie? There’s just no way man. I’m definitely Han.

“You’re definitely Chewie,” Mac mumbles to himself as he drifts off into a world where Jack is still next to him, snoring and talking in his sleep.

Mac wakes up alone, reaching to the cold and empty side of the bed before he remembers. He pulls the shirt off, and returns it to the drawer.

The shirts don’t get washed. Sacrilege. The shirts themselves are important, but the smell is the point.

It doesn’t take long before Jack starts to fade; From their lives, from the shirts.

Black Sabbath goes first. Always one of Jack’s favourites, Mac picks it more often. It’s a Sunday, when Mac retreats early to his room to avoid a house full of caring people that he can’t bring himself to care about. Jack’s voice is husky in his head: You know I love the way you look in that Black Sabbath shirt and nothin’ else.

But it smells like Mac now. Following his ritual he pulls it over his head and… nothing. His chest still aches, his eyes burn, and Jack’s gone silent. No relief. Mac rips the shirt off, gathers it into a ball and buries his face in it. Nothing. Angrily he hurls the shirt across the room as hard as he can loosing a roar of pain with it.

In a rush he runs to the drawer and opens it, afraid of what he’ll find, but Jack’s still there wafting up at him. Mac chooses another, pulls it on and sighs as it slides down over him carrying Jack with it.

Before crawling into bed, Mac retrieves Black Sabbath from the corner. It’s like another friend has died. He folds the shirt up carefully. It goes into a different drawer. It might contaminate what’s left. It must be quarantined.

Arms hugged in tight, under the covers, Jack’s voice is clear again: You know I love that big brain’a yours, but you gotta let it rest. Sleep tight Mac.

And Mac can sleep.

The drawer takes heavy casualties. Day by day, shirt after shirt hits the wall, only to be folded and tucked away somewhere else.

Mac starts sleeping alternating nights so they will hold out as long as they can. Ration.

Without the smell around him, without Jack’s soothing voice to lull him to sleep, Mac tosses and turns and never really rests.

The last shirt to go is Zeppelin.

Mac opens the mostly empty drawer, and nothing comes out of it but a single pile of sewn fabric. He doesn’t even pull it on, just puts the folded shirt to his face and pulls a deep breath through it. It smells like cotton and the stale wooden drawer.

Mac doesn’t remember sitting on the edge of the bed, but he does. He keeps the shirt wrapped around his face, pressed tightly there, while his eyes light up painfully with tears and he weeps into the cotton. The sobs that wrack from his chest, getting wetter by the moment, are muffled. But he doesn’t care if anyone hears him, unless that person is Jack.

Jack’s voice is silent now. No commentary except the old conversations Mac can replay, but they don’t satisfy.

Head aching, eyes swollen, Mac stows the shirt away with the rest, and closes the empty drawer. He’ll never put anything else in that drawer again. He still holds out hope that some of Jack still lingers there, and he’ll keep that safe.

**Author's Note:**

> A Tumblr conversation started based on the work this was inspired by... and it got a little out of hand. As a result Nevcolleil and me got a bit crazy talking about how Riley and Mac would cope with Jack's death... and so here we are. I give full credit for this to katikat (conversation inspiration) and Nevcolleil (the t-shirts were totally your idea).


End file.
